Monograph 64: Prison Privatisation in South Africa: Issues, Challenges and Opportunities, KC Goyer

The prison system in South Africa faces many challenges, several of which are associated with a lack of available resources to meet the increasing demand for correctional services. The key challenges identified by the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) are overcrowding and funding.

The Department has turned to the private sector for assistance, and has signed contracts for two prisons to be designed, constructed, financed and managed by a consortium of private companies.

Internationally, private prisons have seen mixed results. Many of the incidents which take place at private prisons are similar to those which occur at state facilities. Often the criticisms levelled at private prisons could equally apply to state operated facilities as well.

Because of problems with comparability, it is extremely difficult to determine whether private prisons save on costs. In South Africa, it is impossible to ascertain whether a private prison will be cheaper than the public prison, because the standard of care offered by private prisons is entirely unmatched in the public sector.

In the United States, private prisons in general have neither outperformed nor under performed their public counterparts. In Australia, many of the private prisons have experienced serious problems, but the flexibility of their contracts has enabled the government to respond appropriately.

The South African prison privatisation programme is closely modelled after that of the United Kingdom, which appears to have most successfully incorporated the private sector into its prison service.

The first private prison in Africa has recently opened in Bloemfontein, and the second will open in Louis Trichardt early next year. Although the financing arrangements have essentially tied the South African government’s hands in terms of monitoring the operations of these prisons, the professionalism and reforms offered by private companies appear to have far surpassed the correctional services offered by the state.

The private sector should not be limited to the provision of correctional services only, but should also be explored as an option for community based corrections as well as other criminal justice system functions. The outsourcing of ancillary services at public prisons should be investigated, as well as partnering with existing NGO’s. The cost information gathered by the private prison companies should be shared with DCS in order for the government to appropriately estimate the actual cost of providing conditions of humane detention. Better information on the capital costs involved will assist the department with searching for alternative financing arrangements and thus avoid becoming beholden to the private prison consortium.

DCS should enlist the help of private prison companies to conduct further research on recidivism and issues of public health. The controller assigned to monitor contract compliance should not be a DCS official but should rather be appointed from the government’s existing internal audit department, in order to maintain independence. The contracts, as well as the financing arrangements and the cost-comparison analyses, should all be made public in order to provide the appropriate level of transparency and accountability.

Private prisons in South Africa have the potential to be an undemocratic appropriation of the public interest for the sake of corporate profit. However, the facility in Bloemfontein is an enormous improvement on the current prisons in South Africa. Private prisons will necessarily be an improvement on public prisons because it would be almost impossible to perform any worse. Philosophically and theoretically, private prisons could be a frightening and dangerous infiltration of the criminal justice system. In reality, however, they may be the only means of reforming an important and deteriorating government service.